Jury still out on city gun ban

In early 1981, a spate of shootings at the Cabrini-Green public housing complex left 10 people dead and more than 37 people injured. The violence prompted then-Mayor Jane Byrne to promise residents a plan for protection.

Then President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in Washington on March 30, leading Byrne to speed up her plans to propose gun control in light of the public housing violence. Chicago Ald. Edward Burke introduced an ordinance requiring handguns to be licensed by the Police Department.

When it passed under heated debate a year later, the ordinance requiredcurrent owners to register their guns. No new gun owners would be allowed to register, in effect banning any additional handguns from the city.

The ban's effect on violence in the city is debatable. Homicides in the city increased the year after the ordinance, but fluctuated over the next 25 years, with recent totals among the lowest in four decades. Chicago police say 75 percent of all homicides today are committed with firearms.

Some former and current police officers say that they believe the gun ban has done little to deter criminals from acquiring guns. Richard Brzeczek, Chicago police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, decries the ban as a smoke screen.

"Has it been successful in keeping the guns out of the hands of bad guys? The answer is absolutely not," Brzeczek said.

Since the ban, Chicago has become an island with tough restrictions "in an ocean of easy availability," said Jens Ludwig, a professor of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. Guns have continued to flow across the city's borders from places where guns are easy to get. Chicago police collect thousands of illegal firearms each year.

"It's very hard for any city or state to regulate their way out of this problem," Ludwig said.

But Gary Slutkin, who founded the anti-violence group CeaseFire as part of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he believes the ban has reduced city violence. Sweeping away the ban would have repercussions, he said.

"There will be some individuals now who feel they have an opening to get a gun," Slutkin said. "They may feel they are safer because of it, but they're not. There will be more accidents in homes and more people shot because of the misperception of things."